“Thank you for this, but I don’t really need it anymore,” Finn said. “For better or worse, I’ve made my peace with Deirdre. She didn’t care about me, so I’m not going to bother to think about her anymore. At least, I’m going to try not to think about her so much anymore.”

   “Take it,” Ira said in a gruff voice. “She was still your mother. You might want it . . . later.”

   Finn hesitated, but he finally nodded and slipped the photo into his bag.

   We said our good-byes to Ira, who promised to keep in touch and let us know how the theme-park renovations were coming along, and left the Bullet Pointe resort complex. Finn, Bria, Owen, and I got into Finn’s Range Rover for the drive home, with Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei following behind in another car.

   “So,” Finn chirped in a bright voice as we all buckled our seat belts, “who wants to sing some cowboy songs on the way home?”

   Bria stabbed her finger at him. “If I hear so much as a single yippee-ki-yay, I will shoot you. No more cowboy songs. Ever.”

   Finn pouted for a minute, then brightened and started rooting around in the center console.

   “Uh-oh,” Owen muttered.

   “Well, then,” Finn said, coming up with a green CD case that he waggled at the three of us, “it’s a good thing that I brought along my Christmas playlist as backup.”

   Bria pinched the bridge of her nose, while Owen sighed and slumped back against his seat.

   I just laughed.

   “Deck the halls,” I said. “Deck the halls.”

   * * *

   Three hours and several dozen off-key Christmas carols later, we made it back to Ashland. Our first stop was Jo-Jo’s salon so the dwarf could fully heal the burns and bullet holes still decorating my body. She took care of my wounds, then fussed over me for an hour, including making me a mug of hot chocolate. So much better than cucumber slices and being pampered at a fancy spa.

   After that, my friends and I went our separate ways, each of us getting back into the groove of our regular lives.

   The next morning, I got up, took a shower, and went to the Pork Pit an hour early. Sophia and Catalina had done a great job in my absence, and everything was ready to rock ’n’ roll, but I still whipped up a vat of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce, enjoying the way it spiced up the air. The warm, comforting scent always made the restaurant feel like home.

   By the time Silvio came in and took his usual stool at the counter, I’d moved on to one of my projects for the day. The vampire watched me use a hammer and a nail to carefully tack up a single sheet of paper on the wall close to the cash register, right next to a photo of Fletcher and his old friend Warren T. Fox that was already hanging there, along with a framed, bloody copy of Where the Red Fern Grows.

   I stepped back, admiring my handiwork. “Well, what do you think?”

   Silvio snorted. “Only you would be proud of a Wanted poster.”

   My grainy image stared back at me from the wall, along with my name and the info about the reward that Roxy and Brody had offered for me. Silvio was right. Maybe it was egotistical, but I loved being the star of my own Wanted poster.

   I grinned. “I stuffed my suitcase full of posters before we left Bullet Pointe. I have enough of them to paper the entire restaurant if I want to.”

   He rolled his eyes. “That sounds like something Finn would do. Along with getting Wanted posters made up with all our pictures on them for Christmas presents.”

   “Why, Silvio,” I drawled, “I think that’s an excellent idea. I was going to get you a tie. Or maybe a really bad Christmas sweater. But personalized Wanted posters? That is pure genius.”

   His lips curled in disgust, and he actually shuddered.

   I snapped my fingers. “Wait a second. I know. Why not combine the two? I’ll get you a holiday sweater that looks like a Wanted poster, complete with your photo on it. What could be more heartwarming than that?”

   He just groaned.

   * * *

   The rest of the day passed by without incident, and I closed down the restaurant and went home, happy to be back in my familiar routine.

   Late that night, I was in Fletcher’s house, relaxing on the couch in the den, with my stockinged feet propped up on the coffee table in front of me, and an old James Bond movie on the TV. Even though it was almost midnight, I’d just taken some chocolate cranberry-apricot cookies out of the oven, and the house smelled rich and decadent. And the cookies themselves? A divine mix of warm, melting chocolate and sweet pops of fruity flavor from the dried cranberries and apricots. The perfect treat for the final bit of work I had to do on this cold winter’s night.

   Because I still had one more puzzle to solve—the paper from Fletcher’s safety-deposit box.

   I polished off my second cookie, took my feet off the coffee table, and leaned forward. I’d spread the sheet on the table when I’d first come in here, but it looked the same as it had that day in the bank when Finn and I had first found it. A large rectangle drawn on a single sheet of white paper.

   I still didn’t have a clue as to what it meant.

   No, that wasn’t quite true. I knew that it was a message from Fletcher, some cryptic way of telling me something important. The old man wouldn’t have left the paper in the box otherwise. And the irony of the situation didn’t escape me either. Fletcher had purposefully set up this little treasure hunt, one that was eerily similar to my search for Sweet Sally Sue’s jewels.

   The information in Deirdre’s casket had led me to dig up my own mother’s grave, which had led me to the key to that safety-deposit box at First Trust bank. Which had yielded a piece of paper that was going to lead me . . . somewhere else? But where? And to what?

   More than that, I wondered why Fletcher had arranged things like this. Why make me jump through so many hoops for a plain piece of paper? There had to be something more to all of this. Or maybe Fletcher hadn’t wanted me to find any information on the Circle. Maybe he’d never wanted me to know about my mother’s connection to the evil group.